Top Serbian Leaders May Be Tried

War Crimes Group Cites Genocide

LONDON - — The international war crimes prosecutor in The Hague announced on Monday that three top Bosnian Serbs leaders are targets for possible prosecution on genocide charges.

Prosecutor Richard Goldstone, said he was investigating the "criminal responsibility" of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader; Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb militia, and former secret police chief Mico Stanisic for the "mass killing" of Muslims, rape, torture and "other offenses arising from the operation of detention camps and from attacks on unarmed civilians."

Goldstone said that his investigators had "gathered numerous statements and documents supporting" allegations that atrocities committed in 1992 and 1993 in central Bosnia "were planned, resulting in the deliberate murder of a large number of defenseless people and culminating in the mass killing of the Muslim ethnic group in the area."

The tribunal also took custody on Monday of its first war crimes suspect, Dusan Tadic. Tadic, a Bosnian Serb extradited from Germany, is accused of atrocities at the former Omarska detention camp in northwestern Bosnia.

Karadzic and Mladic are the two highest-ranking Serbs to be officially targeted by the first such international proceeding since the post-World War II Nazi war crimes trials.

The action on Monday could complicate the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Yugoslav area as well as efforts, which require the suspects' cooperation, to broker a peace agreement there. A cease-fire in Bosnia is set to expire May 1.

Meanwhile, the fighting continued in Sarajevo. Two civilians were killed on Monday in a mortar attack and Sarajevo airport was closed after a U.N. plane was fired on.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is operating under U.N. auspices.

The Bosnian Serb spokesman in London, Misha Gavrilovic, said on television on Sunday night that the Bosnian Serbs would never accept the legitimacy of the tribunal or cooperate with it.

Twenty-two Serbs stand indicted for war crimes with only Tadic in custody. If the tribunal takes the next step and indicts the three men, they will be wanted men under international law, subject to arrest if they leave Bosnia.